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Archive: 2006 July
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Old Habits Die Hard
Why are people still using EPS files for raster graphics?
I have explained in an earlier article when one is to use EPS files and when he is to use TIFF. I can never stress enough the point I made in that article so here I am again.
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3-D Type With The Radial Blur Filter
A couple weeks ago I wrote about a technique adding 3-D motion to an image with the Radial Blur filter. Now you’ll see how a variation of that technique can actually create three-dimensional type.
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Caligari trueSpace 3–3D Drawing Program, Free!
Sample the Caligari wares with a free copy of the third version of their signature application
Caligari, Inc., is a software firm rightly famous for a popular 3D drawing package, trueSpace. Now in version 7, it boasts quite in impressive range of capabilities and, judging by the chatter on such sites as SciFiMeshes, has a great number of fans.
Read more on Caligari trueSpace 3–3D Drawing Program, Free!…
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Draw No-Fill Shapes With Drop Shadows In InDesign
Sometimes you want to add emphasis to something in a photo or illustration, but you don’t want to crop it closer or draw a cheesy arrow. InDesign’s transparency and drop shadow features can be used in tandem to create a sophisticated “drop shadow shape” that will strengthen your page layouts.
Read more on Draw No-Fill Shapes With Drop Shadows In InDesign…
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Freeware Friday: Zoomify EZ
The problem: when posting a full-size image on the web for a client to view, sizing the image so it fits on the screen hides the details; viewing the image full-size means they have to scroll and can’t see the full effect of the image. The solution: Zoomify EZ.
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Want To Write On Water? Use An AMOEBA.
Experimental device makes marks on water, intended for special effects at theme parks.
The AMOEBA in action (Image:Pink Tentacle.comSome people may call it a miracle, some people may just be scratching thier heads over this one, but it seems that a Japanese research consortium made up of Akishima Laboratories and a professor at Osaka University have figured out how to draw on water.
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Size matters
What size newspaper do readers want?
If a hundred readers were polled and asked if they preferred their newspaper to be bigger or smaller, I believe most would choose a smaller newspaper. But I’m an environmentalist of sorts. And I know how to find news online.
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Emigre Redesigns Website; Offers OpenType
Site remodel and specials on conversions offered
The personnel at Emigre have announced the launch of the redesigned Emigre site, as well as OpenType additions to thier range.
The new Emigre site links to a great many things–not only type offerings and all 69 covers from the recently-discontinued Emigre magazine but also artistic diversions such as Zuzana Licko’s ceramic vases and Rudy Vander Lans’ phototgraphy. Also available is Typetease, their online typesetter.
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TypeCon 2006 Approaches
There’s still time to register for the annual convention
TypeCon 2006–a/k/a “The Boston T Party”–is imminent.
This year’s event is scheduled from 9-13 August 2006 at the Hyatt Regency Boston. Staged by The Society of Typographic Aficionados, it looks to be a packed schedule with such topics as: demystifying Mac OS X font managment, A Typographic tour of Cambridge and Boston, Typography as Art, the world of William Addison Dwiggins, and a great deal more.
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UNC To Host Early American Cartography Conference
Two-day Conference to examine the mapping of the USA in her first century
The North Carolina Collection, University Library, University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill, have just announced an upcoming two-day conference examining the state of American mapping during most of the republic’s first century.
Read more on UNC To Host Early American Cartography Conference…
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ALA MAGERT Opens Map Scanning Registry
Organizing content, elminating duplication in effort, making resources available to all
The American Library Association’s Map and Geography Roundtable (ALA MAGERT) have announced the establishment of a new Map Scanning Registry. In a mailing to members of the Maphist mailing list, the University of Arizona’s Christine Kollen put it thus:
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Weekly News and Links Round Up
Find out what’s going on this week in web design.
- Adobe Opines on how the web is changing Hollywood.
- Another good Adobe article about developing a magazine from start to finish with CSS and WordPress. Sidenote: Please ignore that the authors of this article talk about CSS like it’s some new technology and something you could develop a non-Flash site without.
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Payless ShoeSource Rebrands
Redesign of logo, type meant to signify new directions for the Western Hemisphere’s largest shoe retailer
The new identity for footwear retailer Payless Shoesource.Payless is a shoe reatailer known to nearly every consumer in the United States and Canada; its over 4,000 stores have been a fixture of the American landscape since the 1970′s, known for bargain-priced footwear and a self-service approach which was an innovation when the stores first appeared.
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In Pictures ebook Series Offered Free until August 1
Want to learn MySQL, Perl, or PHP? How about Photoshop CS2 or Dreamweaver 8? Here’s your chance, and until August 1, it’s free!
Until August 1, 2006, the In Pictures series of ebooks, published by Visibooks LLC, will be free for download in pdf form. There are books on many subjects: Office 2003 products like Excel and Word, Front Page 2003, Dreamweaver 8, Photoshop CS2, Photoshop Elements 4, and many others. These books cover the latest versions of the software.
Read more on In Pictures ebook Series Offered Free until August 1…
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Elephant’s Memory: A Touching Story
A touching story of the kindness of man and the connection between man and beast.
In 1986, Mkele Mbembe was on holiday in Kenya after graduating from college. On a hike through the bush, he came across a young bull elephant standing with one leg raised in the air. The elephant seemed distressed, so Mbembe approached it very carefully. He got down on one knee and inspected the elephant’s foot, and found a large thorn deeply embedded in it.
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The Lightroom beta has been around for awhile for Macintosh. Now it’s available for Windows as well.
The Lightroom beta for Windows has been released, allowing Windows users to store, view and present their photography. The Lightroom page at Adobe Labs has more information, including a good tutorial by George Jardine and downloads for Mac and Windows.
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Illustrator’s Transparency palette sets the opacity of objects, and allows you to use blending modes determine how the colors of objects mix with the colors of objects they cross. Here’s how the blending modes work.
Read more on How To: An Explanation of Illustrator’s Blending Modes…
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Alien In My Bedroom
Alien ScareFearful of a looming deadline? Put off the spectre for three minutes to indulge in the guilty pleasure of enjoying someone else’s fright.
In order to frighten his sister Lara, Josh positions a creepy child’s mannequin next to her bed and tapes her reaction. He was expecting her to be scared, but not that scared. She goes completely hysterical!
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Freeware Friday: Commodore 64 PC Font
A blast from the 8-bit past!
“64 KB should be enough for anybody…”If you’re like us (well, maybe you aren’t, but anyway) you remember the days when 64 KB RAM cost as much 6.4 GB costs today. Those were the salad days, the halcyon days of 8-bit computing, and many different and incompatible systems competed for the geekly dollar; from the modest Timex-Sinclair 1000 to the hot and happening TRS, Tandy, and Apple][‘s.
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Freeware Friday: Photoshop Actions
My work lately has involved a lot of automation and actions, so I thought to introduce you to some good sources of actions ready for your use!
If you’re not using actions yet, you probably should be. Photoshop’s robust framework for building and executing actions makes reptitive tasks much easier. I am using them now to process catalog images for a website I’m designing. Here are more sources for top-quality actions:
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Freeware Friday: Illustrator Brushes Website
Looking for an Illustrator reference with tutorials, brushes, and more? Try the Illustrator Brushes Website!
The creator of the highly successful Photoshop Brushes Website has created a site for Illustrator users: the Illustrator Brushes Website. There are tutorials on brushes and free brushes for download.
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In the world of online romance, truth is flexible. When online lovers meet in person, the reality doesn’t always align with cyber fantasy. Nowhere is this demonstrated more effectively than in the case of a flirtatious Frenchman who discovered that his hot Internet romance had been with his mother.
Read more on Incesternet: Anonymous Cyber Lovers Turn Out to be Mother and Son…
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Quick Tip: Masking A Layer With Layer Styles
Some layer styles can cause problems when the layer subsequently gets a layer mask. This quick technique will get around the problem.
Figure 1: The original image.Figure 1 shows a foreground object on its own layer and a background (which, coincidentally, is a shot of rural southeast Iowa where I grew up). The top layer, with the foreground object, has a strong Outer Glow layer style. I sometimes face a problem when I add a layer mask to the top layer and mask it with a soft brush: the layer style affects all pixels, so unless I mask all pixels completely in an area I’ll end up with a thick Outer Glow that I can’t mask effectively by masking the layer. See Figure 2.
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Typography Word of the Day: Ear
A unique, delightful handle on the little “g”.
It must somehwere be writ large that every part of every letter have a name, regardless of how unique that part be.
In this spirit, we give you the ear, which, as the illustration will illuminate, is the cowlick on the top story of the minuscule “g”.
We know not who named it, how it evolved, or why, but we know that of all the glyphs we’ve so far assayed in the Roman set, the ear is only found on the minuscule “g”. And we think that’s unique enough to have a mention of its own.
- Cartography Word of the Day: Metes and Bounds
An old system of property line survey, brought over from England
We focus again on a term of surveying. and this is important because, of course, surveys and legal descriptions of land have in the past formed a basis for an a reference to the compilation of maps for the general public’s use.
- Cartography Word of the Day: Metes and Bounds
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